BioWare Moves To 'Next Phase' Of Dragon Age Franchise

The development behind Dragon Age II is finally complete. The team has finished all content for the game and has moved on to the franchise’s future.

Mark Darrah, executive producer of Dragon Age II, posted on the official BioWare forums saying the team is moving on to what's next. “While we will still be keeping an eye out for any issues that might crop up in DAII and supporting the community should any emergencies should arise, we’re moving the entire team’s focus to the next phase of Dragon Age’s future.”

Darrah wasn’t able to give any hints or clues but suggests the team is taking a good, hard look at the series going forward.

“You’ve most certainly heard the rumors floating around, and unfortunately I can’t really comment on them,” he said. “However, what I can say is that we’ve been thinking a lot about Dragon Age – what it means, and where it could go. This past year, we’ve spent a lot of time both going back to the ‘BioWare vault’ of games and re-examining them, and looking at some new possibilities that today’s industry allows.”

In an interview with Wired last December, BioWare CEO Dr. Ray Muzyka said his studio was looking heavily at games like Skyrim. “[The next Dragon Age] is gonna have the best of features from the prior Dragon Age games, but it’s also gonna have a lot of things I think players are gonna find compelling from some of the games that are out now that are doing really well with more of an open-world feel. We’re checking [Skyrim] out aggressively.

"We like it. We’re big admirers of [Bethesda] and the product. We think we can do some wonderful things."

Soooo . . . more glitches, worse character development, and a generic story? In return for what, the ability to shout bears off a mountain?
I know DAII wasn't perfect. And I'm all for shouting at stuff.
But if I want to play a gigantic open-world fantasy that emphasizes gameplay options and world building over story and character, I'll play Skyrim. Or Fallout.
Don't misunderstand -- I really enjoy Bethesda's games. But BioWare's style is much more to my liking, bad endings and all. I mean, at least I care enough about the ends of BioWare games to consider them good or bad.
By contrast, I'm not even sure when I GET to the end of a Bethesda game.

Will the Starchild be making an appearance, forcing you to choose between red, green, or blue mage energy that lays waste to Ferelden, with one choice combining mortal and Darkspawn to a single form. And magically teleports your LI and a random teammate to a tropical glade, even if your LI was with you at the time?

Not surprised. Surprised that they're only just now finishing up content in a game that had almost no DLC, but not surprised they're looking elsewhere. BioWare is good at improving their already established gameplay, though the BioWare studio behind Dragon Age has generally underachieved across the board in comparison to their brethren. Just look at the page ME3 took from Gears and how much better that game played as a result of it. I'm all for them taking inspiration from other sources, they're good at it. Queue people taking the comment about Skyrim the wrong way instead of waiting to see what the game is going to be before bashing it.

And by the way, this whole kick BioWare in the groin, complain and whine about ME3, and generally berate/insult an excellent studio because of one part of a game that was otherwise excellently written and designed has frankly gotten old about a billion times faster than the whole Arrow to the Knee meme.

So DA3: Now in total anime style; with cover magic/bow mechanics; no dialogue tree to deliver a completely cinematic experience; no loot, but several 'wildly different' sets of armors for the PC; day 1 DLC that gives you the option to romance characters, It's obviously a full game without that feature. Any real fan would buy it anyway.

That's Bioware of today, wouldn't be surprised in the least if it actually happened.

I don't recall ever being as disappointed as I was with how they handled DA2. And I'm not that excited about them trying to do a Skyrim. If they need to look at something like Skyrim, does that mean they've truly lost the plot?